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Closing Out Midnight Madness…

Last night was the celebration, but it’s back to the blood, sweat and tears of two-a-days for the roughly 5000 Division I players around the country today as coaches begin whipping their teams into shape for season openers in less than a month. RTC’s John Stevens dynamited last night’s disappointing ESPNU coverage, ultimately finding that the various tweets and message board updates from fans, coaches, players and media around the country were entirely more interesting than Steve Lavin sitting in an empty locker room waiting for a volleyball game to end. So to wrap up our Midnight Madness coverage, let’s take another look at some of the sights and sounds from last night’s events around the nation.

First, some of the bigger events of last night…

Duke’s Midnight Madness took an odd turn last evening. From The Onion:

DURHAM, NC—Freshman Nate Washburn, 17, was mutilated in front of 12,000 students, players, and coaches at Duke University’s Cameron Indoor Stadium Friday during the school’s traditional “Midnight Madness Sacrifice A Freshman Ceremony.” Prior to their first official practice, six hooded members of the Duke basketball team, lightly chanting the school’s fight song, led a blindfolded Washburn to center court, where he was greeted by head coach Mike Krzyzewski…

Ok, that’s a joke. But the following video wasn’t. They actually showed this at last night’s Countdown to Craziness in Cameron (this is the kind of stuff ESPNU should have been showing!), and the Titanic scene is absolutely going to give us nightmares for the entire rest of Nolan Smith’s career. Seriously. Check it out at the 1:55 minute mark (but the whole thing is worth watching).

And you may have heard that some tomfoolery got into those silly students at Georgetown last night. Well, one specifically. A freshman named Alex Thiele was arrested on suspicion of lifting a loaded handgun from a Park Police officer and then firing the damn thing in a bathroom in one of the dorms on campus. What – it wouldn’t flush? This is just bizarre.

Moving on, here’s Tom Izzo driving into the sold-out (first time ever) Breslin Center at Michigan State in a Formula 1 race car. The tie-in, of course, is that Indianapolis is the site of the 2010 Final Four.

Here’s some of the freshman dance skit at Kansas’ Late Night in the Phog last evening. Gary Parrish was there for this one.

You knew Kentucky’s Big Blue Madness was going to be on the other side of insane last night, and it was. Here’s John Calipari’s opening speech, which is being compared favorably with Obama’s gift of oratory by some (though not all).

Here’s Bob Huggins entering West Virginia’s Midnight Madness last night. WVU is getting a lot of early season hype as a darkhorse F4 candidate.

And here’s a look at Tom Crean’s team in Y2 of the massive rebuilding project at Indiana.

Over at Syracuse, one reporter thought the whole thing was “horrific,” but here are some highlights to let you decide for yourself… would it be terrible if we were rooting for Orange players to get in trouble with the law this year so we can keep showing Sheriff Boeheim in his getup throughout the season?

Syracuse Basketball Midnight Madness 2009

Moving into some other things we’ve found floating around from last night, here’s Wazzu’s Brock Motum mimicing the David Lee shirtless dunk from 2001 here:

And Memphis’ Will Coleman getting some help on his rubber-arms dunk from the baseline:

Here’s UT-Arlington’s Marquez Haynes getting WAY up for a dunk in their dunk contest:

And a few tweets to show us that these guys are already feeling the burn…

And Louisville’s Jerry Smith: That’s a great day fellas… Journey of 1,000 miles starts wit 1 step! Let’s keep workin…

No further comment is necessary on whether Smith’s 1000 miles will involve community service hours.

Undoubtedly it was a really fun night across much of the college basketball nation, and we missed some things, so if there’s something that you saw and feel absolutely must be represented here, let us know at rushthecourt@yahoo.com and we’ll get it up.

Coach Altman isn’t a real fan of those, especially while he was HC at Kansas St., he lost a player for the season during one of those events. He probably doesn’t want anything to do with that since then.